Wait…. piri what?
You piriformis.
Your piriformis is a small muscle located deep under your glute. For those of you who don’t know what your glute is, it’s your butt cheek.
So there’s this thing called piriformis syndrome, no don’t worry it’s not nearly as bad as you think. Basically the muscle becomes inflamed and narrows. In turn this can cause a myriad of problems such as,
Pain, tingling, and numbness in the butt
Pain, tingling, and numbness in the leg
Both of these are caused because the sciatic nerve, you’ve probably heard of sciatica before, runs through the piriformis. So when it gets angry and tightens down, guess what it presses on? Yup you guessed it, the sciatic nerve.
The tightening of the piriformis can also cause lower back pain, as it tightens, it tightens all the muscles around it too, including the erectors. No fun.
So today we’re going to go over some mobility drills to loosen it up!
If you suffer from lower back or knee pain, reach out to us, no one should live in pain.
Coach Andy is an Owner and Head Coach at Tradewinds. He grew up in traditional martial arts and uses that rigor and discipline in his CrossFit training. The more technical the movement, the better, with his specialty being the olympic lifts, especially the snatch.